Project 440

Community Partner

Project 440 is an organization that is designed to train young musicians to use music as a way to help out the community. Project 440 wants to show young musicians about taking the passion of playing and turning it into a passion for giving and creating a way to interact. The organization is establishing music as an essential tool for education, leadership, community building, teamwork, leadership, and self-confidence. Through events and social media, Project 440 is influencing teenagers and kids to get involved in their classes and events as a way to serve the community by bringing them together for music.

Challenge

Project 440 approached Beautiful Social seeking to modernize their website. When presented with the project the group was given an extensive list of updates. The main task that the group was presented with was the design of the website. The original design was difficult for the user to navigate. Another task the group was given was updating the website since some of the current information on it was incorrect. The platform Project 440 had originally been using was WordPress. Thus the outdated information along with re-design and reorganization of the current content allowed the group to begin to plan next steps. The main thought in the group's mind was achieving Project 440 ‘s goals while creating content that was easy for the user to navigate.

Stratigic Thinking

Our group approached the work for our website’s content very gingerly. We wanted to make sure we understood what changes Project 440 needed by talking to Julie Flower. We began with the visual aspect of the website because we felt images and video would help explain more fully what the organization did. Looking at the previous site’s pages, we decided to thin out the unnecessary text. The social media we often looked to was Twitter because we found this was Project 440’s most active account. The organization “favorited” and “retweeted” us often. Additionally, Instagram served as a platform to inform people with visuals what Project 440 is about. Weekly short videos on Instagram allowed for us to prepare our viewers for what to expect when the site goes live. The hashtags #project440 and #musicheals440 were ways for students (current and potential), teachers, and investors to follow the progress of the new website or eventually participate in the program.

Results

The results of our work can be seen at project440.com. We worked week after week tweaking even just minor details in order to get it where it is at today. For the most part I believe we all are happy with our work but most importantly proud of all the effort put into the website. One detail of the website that we weren’t thrilled about is the banner photos. We originally had photos that our community partner provided which were professionally taken but then later learned we must use their photos on Facebook instead. It was a small bump in the road and we replaced the photos with what we thought were the best photos from their Facebook page. We also made pages that are not visible to the public so when our community partner needs them she can simply activate them and fill in the information where needed.